Moto X teardown reveals all the mid-range innards

Assembled and disassembled in the USA

Share this story

Ever wonder what was inside the Moto X? Does it really house a custom-designed "X8 computing" chip? Is it just filled with tiny American flags? iFixit grabbed their usual bag of spudgers and screwdrivers and ripped apart the Moto X to find out.

The really unique part of the Moto X is the "X8 Mobile Computing System," which Motorola claims is composed of a Snapdragon S4 Pro, a natural language processor, and a contextual computing processor. It would be interesting to see if Moto went all out and branded the chip on the motherboard, but sadly, iFixit says the X8 is located under the orange-highlighted RAM chip, so we will never see it.

The other standout attribute is that the woven back on the AT&T version is actually woven–you can see right through it!

iFixit gives the Moto X a seven out of 10 for repairability, citing a liberal use of easy-to-remove pressure contacts and a single screw type. The negatives include a fused digitizer/display combo and a glued-on back panel. For the full blow-by-blow teardown, go check out the article.

Share this story

Ron Amadeo
Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Emailron@arstechnica.com//Twitter@RonAmadeo